The tragic slaying of three Muslims in North Carolina is understandably dominating the headlines this morning. According to his facebook page, the killer was a devout atheist and political liberal. I think it’s very rarely helpful or fair to connect political beliefs to the acts of possibly deranged or mentally ill individuals, and thankfully some of the smarter liberal commmentators such as Steve Benen agree with me on this point. And Benen was also correct to point out that some on the right have been too quick to blame politics as a motive for individual killings, such as when some conservatives engaged in overheated finger-pointing at New York’s liberal mayor Bill deBlasio after two NYPD officers were killed in December.
However, I do think it’s fair to say that attributing political motives to individual killings is much more of a phenomenon on the left. In recent years, liberal organizations and commentators have gone out of their way to connect mainstream conservative political beliefs to violence, and more often than not, such connections are dubious or nonexistant. Back in 2011, I addressed this unseemly tendency of the left in the wake of the Anders Brevik killings with “Debunking the Left-Wing Myths About ‘Right-Wing, Extremist Christians.'”
One of the prime perpetrators of these political smears is the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has devolved from an organization that once combatted real hate groups such as the KKK to a pathetic racket thst trades on its former reputation to smear people such as Ben Carson as “extremist.” The SPLC, has among other things, blamed Sarah Palin’s political rhetoric for providing a “a facilitating context” for the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by a man who is quite clearly mentally ill and barely registered discernible political opinons. Of course, when another killer shot a security guard and was intent of starting a killing spree at the mainstream Christian organization Family Research Council he told the FBI that he found the organization listed on a “hate map” on the SPLC’s website. What was SPLC’s response to this awkward revelation they were associated with this terrible crime?:
By the loose standard of “facilitating context,” the unjust inclusion of the Family Research Council headquarters on a “hate map” otherwise filled with violent white nationalist organizations is a much more serious transgression—particularly when Corkins admits he used the map to learn about his target. And while Leo Johnson’s defining characteristics are his courage and character, as long as we’re talking about context, it’s worth pondering why the founder of a celebrated civil rights organization is obdurately unreflective about the role his SPLC played in the shooting of a black man.
Which brings us to the Facebook page of the North Carolina killer, which suggests he wasn’t remotely neutral when it comes to his atheist and liberal political opinions:
Somehow if he had liked Sean Hannity and the Southern Baptist Convention instead of Rachel Maddow and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, I don’t think we would see the media restraint we’re seeing when it comes to connecting this killer’s politics to his terrible deeds.
And again, I would note the irony of his fondness for the Southern Poverty Law Center. By the SPLC’s own logic, the SPLC shares responsibility for another hate crime. Now that the SPLC has been hoisted by its own petard twice in a few years, I hope the SPLC and other liberal groups act more responsibly the next time they want to blame a tragic crime on someone’s personal politics.
